BEAM expansion and SpaceX launch tomorrow

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Jeff
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"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Jeff


Yeah, apparently, neither went so well.

Hoping for a better day today.
--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Yeah, apparently, neither went so well.

We test to find problems, so with BEAM this is definitely not
unexpected. As for SpaceX, they don't have *that* many launches under
their belt, so problems will crop up. Even ULA had an "anomaly" on
their last Atlas V flight, despite their quite impressive launch record.

Hoping for a better day today.

As for BEAM, the pictures seem to visually confirm that the pyros
holding the "packing straps" in place did fire. That said, the material
sticking to itself, especially in vacuum, seems quite likely. This
would mean a bit more air pressure might be needed to insure deployment.
But since this is attached to ISS, I'm guessing NASA will take some kind
of very conservative approach to solving this issue.

I talked with a former Harris employee who used to work on designing
space structures, and he said material sticking to itself in vacuum is
common in "cloth like" materials which are tightly packed for launch.
This needs to be accounted for during deployments (in the case of BEAM,
"expansion"). Of course, he could not provide any details, just these
sweeping generalizations. ;-)

Jeff
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"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Yeah, apparently, neither went so well.

We test to find problems, so with BEAM this is definitely not
unexpected.

Perhaps. I'd be interested in seeing how the previous Bigelow items faired.
Of course they weren't docked to an active space station so they could take
fewer precautions.

As for SpaceX, they don't have *that* many launches under
their belt, so problems will crop up. Even ULA had an "anomaly" on
their last Atlas V flight, despite their quite impressive launch record.


Agreed.

Hoping for a better day today.

As for BEAM, the pictures seem to visually confirm that the pyros
holding the "packing straps" in place did fire. That said, the material
sticking to itself, especially in vacuum, seems quite likely. This
would mean a bit more air pressure might be needed to insure deployment.
But since this is attached to ISS, I'm guessing NASA will take some kind
of very conservative approach to solving this issue.

Yeah. Worst case, is you pop it up explosively and start to lose air through
your valve being used to expand it.
That said, I highly doubt that'll be an issue. I suspect they'll figure
some max pressure they will tolerate and slowly ramp up to that.


I talked with a former Harris employee who used to work on designing
space structures, and he said material sticking to itself in vacuum is
common in "cloth like" materials which are tightly packed for launch.
This needs to be accounted for during deployments (in the case of BEAM,
"expansion"). Of course, he could not provide any details, just these
sweeping generalizations. ;-)

Of course. :-)


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

In article ,
says...

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Yeah, apparently, neither went so well.

SpaceX launch appears to be going well. Another successful high energy,
three engine, hover slam landing for the first stage. The payload is
now coasting, waiting for the 2nd burn of the 2nd stage.

First stage landing was very close to the center of the "X" on the
barge. It's looking like they really don't need a bigger barge, or a
converted oil platform, or other expensive offshore platforms. The
barge is looking like it's doing just fine at its job.

Jeff
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On 5/27/2016 5:56 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
The
barge is looking like it's doing just fine at its job.
That barge won't look so good in a high sea state. Inevitably Space X
will sometimes have to make decisions when that happens; delay launch vs
sacrifice booster.

That said, you may color me damn impressed with their string of
successful recoveries.

Getting back to the thread subject, they have decided to take a second
try at BEAM tomorrow.

"Vaughn Simon" wrote in message ...

On 5/27/2016 5:56 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
The
barge is looking like it's doing just fine at its job.
That barge won't look so good in a high sea state. Inevitably Space X
will sometimes have to make decisions when that happens; delay launch vs
sacrifice booster.

That said, you may color me damn impressed with their string of
successful recoveries.

Yeah, 3 in a row. Pretty impressive.



Getting back to the thread subject, they have decided to take a second
try at BEAM tomorrow.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

In article ,
says...

In article ,
says...

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Tomorrow should be an exciting day. BEAM is set to be expanded in the
a.m. (EST) and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another comsat (and attempt
another high energy barge landing) in the p.m.

Yeah, apparently, neither went so well.

SpaceX launch appears to be going well. Another successful high energy,
three engine, hover slam landing for the first stage. The payload is
now coasting, waiting for the 2nd burn of the 2nd stage.

First stage landing was very close to the center of the "X" on the
barge. It's looking like they really don't need a bigger barge, or a
converted oil platform, or other expensive offshore platforms. The
barge is looking like it's doing just fine at its job.

From what I understand, the 2nd burn was successful and the satellite
was successfully released. Good job SpaceX.

Jeff

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Jeff Findley wrote:
SpaceX launch appears to be going well. Another successful high
energy, three engine, hover slam landing for the first stage. The
payload is now coasting, waiting for the 2nd burn of the 2nd stage.

The repeated photo-bombing of the camera pointed at the pad/tower by
wasps was a hoot too

Watching the technical webcast, was that one of the steering vanes
which ignited around the time of the entry burn?

rick jones
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In message
Rick Jones wrote:

Watching the technical webcast, was that one of the steering vanes
which ignited around the time of the entry burn?

Quite possibly spent hydraulic fluid burning. The previous first stage
has what appears to be a burn mark on the interstage starting from
around the same point.

Anthony